It’s that time of year again when the Oscar pundits enter the limelight and start making their predictions for the frontrunners in various Academy Award races.
One category you won’t hear anyone “punditing” about though is the Best Animated Short Film category. That’s because we don’t have any pundits in the animation business, and even if we did, none of them would know what’s in contention. Cartoon Brew is committed to solving at least half of that problem.
We’ve been compiling a list all year long of the films that have qualified for the Academy’s Animated Short Film category. Short films, as Brew readers already know, offer a unique space for innovation and experimentation as few other animation platforms do. It’s where you’ll find some of the art form’s most audacious and exciting annual achievements, and it’s our belief that if more Academy members understood the range and breadth of the contenders, they’d be able to make more informed decisions about the most award-worthy short film efforts of the year.
There are three pathways to qualifying for the Academy Award Best Animated Short category:
The film must have won a qualifying award at a competitive film festival. The list of film festivals and the specific awards at those festivals that can qualify a film can be found in this pdf.
The picture must have been publicly exhibited for paid admission in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County for a run of at least seven consecutive days with at least one screening a day prior to public exhibition or distribution by any non-theatrical means. The picture also must appear in the theater listings along with the appropriate dates and screening time(s).
The film must have won a Gold, Silver or Bronze Medal award in the Academy’s 2018 Student Academy Awards competition in the Animation, Narrative, Alternative or Foreign Film category.
Here’s a few standard disclaimers: Even though all of the films in our list are technically qualified, it is still up to the filmmaker to take the extra step of entering the film into the Oscar competition. This year, we’ve also tried to identify films that have qualified through the public exhibition route, but that can be done very quietly (and often is) so there may be other films that have qualified without our knowledge. The entire official list of qualified films won’t be known until the Academy presents the eligible long-list of films to their membership in October.
So, while the list isn’t perfect, it’s the only list of its kind that anyone publishes about the Animated Short category, and you’ll likely find most (if not all) of this year’s Oscar nominees below. Last year’s preliminary list of qualified films included nine of the ten films that were eventually shortlisted, and all five nominees in the category.
The list was compiled through publicly available information. The films are presented below in alphabetical order:
32-Rbit
Víctor Orozco Ramírez (Mexico/Germany)
Qualified at Guadalajara In’t Short Film Festival
A Double Life
Job, Joris & Marieke (The Netherlands)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Age of Sail
John Kahrs (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Agua Viva
Alexa Lim Haas (USA)
Qualified at SXSW
Animal Behavior
Alison Snowden, David Fine (Canada)
Qualified at Anima Mundi
Annihilation
Robbie Ward (USA)
Qualified at Ann Arbor
Back to the Moon
Fx Goby, Hélène Leroux (USA/UK)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Bango Vassil
Milen Vitanov (Bulgaria/Germany)
Qualified at In the Palace Int’l Short Film Festival
Bao
Domee Shi (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Between the Lines
Maria Koneva (Russia)
Qualified at Seattle
Bilby
Pierre Perifel, J.P. Sans, Liron Topaz (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Bird Karma
William Salazar (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Black Wave (Schwarze Welle)
Mariola Brillowska (Germany)
Qualified at German Short Film Award
Bloeistraat 11
Nienke Deutz (Belgium/The Netherlands)
Qualified at Annecy
Cat Days
Jon Frickey (Germany/Japan)
Qualified at Stuttgart
Changyou’s Journey
Perry S. Chen (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Coyote
Lorenz Wunderle (Switzerland)
Qualified at Aspen Shortsfest, Go Short In’t Film Festival
Crow: The Legend
Eric Darnell (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Daisy
Yu Yu (USA)
Qualified through Student Academy Awards
Dead Horses
Marc Riba and Anna Solanas (Spain)
Qualified at Anim’est
Deyzangeroo
Ehsan Gharib (Canada)
Qualified at DOK Leipzig
Emily
Marlies van der Wel (The Netherlands)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Fire in Cardboard City
Phil Brough (New Zealand)
Qualified through Show Me Shorts Film Festival
First Bloom
Tingting Liu (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Fundamental (基石)
Shih Chieh Chiu (Taiwan)
Qualified at Atlanta Film Festival
Glucose
Jeron Braxton (USA)
Qualified at Sundance
Hybrids
Florian Brauch, Kim Tailhades, Matthieu Pujol, Yohan Thireau, Romain Thirion (France)
Qualified at SIGGRAPH, Sitges
Ian
Abel Goldfarb (Argentina)
Qualified at LA Shorts Fest
Icebergs
Eirini Vianelli (USA/Greece)
Qualified at San Francisco Int’l Film Festival
Interstitial
Shunsaku Hayashi (Japan)
Qualified at Slamdance
Intimity
Elodie Dermange (Switzerland)
Qualified at Tampere
Invisible
Akihiko Yamashita (Japan)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Kanini and Kanino
Hiromasa Yonebayashi (Japan)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Keep Your Hair On, Olivier
Armelle Mercat (France)
Qualified at Krakow
La chute
Boris Labbé (France)
Qualified at Animafest Zagreb
La Noria
Carlos Baena (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Late Afternoon
Louise Bagnall (Ireland)
Qualified at Animayo, Tribeca
Life Ain’t Gonna Lose
Yoshiyuki Momose (Japan)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Little Red Giant – The Monster That I Was
Laura Harrison (USA)
Qualified at Athens Int’l Film & Video Festival
Lost & Found
Andrew Goldsmith, Bradley Slabe (Australia)
Qualified at Sydney
Lotus Lantern
Xingpei Shen (USA/China)
Qualified at Ann Arbor
Nevada
Emily Ann Hoffman (USA)
Qualified at Palm Springs Int’l Shortfest
Obon
André Hörmann, Samo (Anna Bergman) (Germany)
Qualified at Krakow
One Small Step
Andrew Chesworth, Bobby Pontillas (USA/China)
Qualified at Flickers’ Rhode Island Film Festival
Pépé le morse
Lucrèce Andreae (France)
Qualified at César Award
Poles Apart
Paloma Baeza (U.K.)
Qualified at BAFTA Awards
Pour 585
Patrick Smith (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Raccoon and the Light
Hanna Kim (USA)
Qualified through Student Academy Awards
Re-Gifted
Eaza Shukla (USA)
Qualified through Student Academy Awards
Shahkboy
Jake Peckar (USA)
Qualified at Florida Film Festival
Skin for Skin
Kevin D.A. Kurytnik & Carol Beecher (Canada)
Qualified at Edmonton Int’l Film Festival
Sog
Jonatan Schwenk (Germany)
Qualified at Flickerfest, Riverrun
Solar Walk
Réka Bucsi (Denmark)
Qualified at Ottawa
Sonder
Neth Nom (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
The Blissful Accidental Death
Sergiu Negulici (Romania)
Qualified at Cinanima, Hiroshima
The Box
Dušan Kastelic (Slovenia)
Qualified at Cinequest
The Driver is Red
Randall Christopher (USA)
Qualified at Cleveland Int’l Film festival
The Emperor’s Newest Clothes
Simon Wilches Castro (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
The Green Bird
Pierre Perveyrie, Maximilien Bougeois, Marine Goalard, Irina Nguyen-Duc, Quentin Dubois (France)
Qualified through Student Academy Awards
The Night of the Plastic Bags
Gabriel Harel (France)
Qualified at Odense
The Noise of Licking (A nyalintás nesze)
Nadja Andrasev (Hungary)
Qualified at New Orleans
The Pig on the Hill
Jamy Wheless, John Helms (USA/Serbia)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
The Theory of Sunset
Roman Sokolov (Russia)
Qualified at NY Int’l Children’s Film Festival
The Wiremen
Jessica Patterson (Ireland)
Qualified at Galway Film Fleadh
Tigtone and The Wizard Hunt
Titmouse Animation/Adult Swim (USA)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Tweet Tweet
Zhanna Bekmambetova (Russia)
Qualified through public exhibition in LA county
Two Balloons
Mark C. Smith (USA)
Qualified at Foyle Film Festival
Untravel (Neputovanja)
Ana Nedeljković, Nikola Majdak Jr. (Serbia, Slovakia)
Qualified at Animator Int’l Animated Film Festival
Weekends
Trevor Jimenez (USA)
Qualified at Annecy, Warsaw, Nashville
Wildebeest
Nicolas Keppens, Matthias Phlips (Belgium)
Qualified at Guanajuato
Woody & Woody
Jaume Carrió (Spain)
Qualified at Goya Awards
Films posted at top of article, left to right: “Pépé le morse,” “Nevada,” “The Box,” “The Blissful Accidental Death”
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